Comcast, Google and Verizon create network management advisory group

Network management may be a cornerstone issue of the FCC's net neutrality drive, so it should not be that surprising that a group of representatives from the cable, telco and vendor community have come together to form the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG or TAG).  

Led by Dale Hatfield, former FCC chief technologist, the group includes many of the usual suspect players you would expect to find in the broadband ecosystem, including traditional and competitive service providers (AT&T, Verizon and Level 3), cable operators (Comcast Corporation and Time Warner Cable), satellite communications (DISH Network and EchoStar Corp.), network infrastructure (Cisco), silicon (Intel) and software (Microsoft).

"TAG will function as a neutral, expert technical forum and promote a greater consensus around technical practices within the Internet community," said Hatfield in a statement.

Among its many goals, BITAG will focus on how network management could affect a users' Internet experience, including the applications, content and devices that leverage an Internet connection.

The formation of the BITAG group comes as the FCC contemplates what its next move will be to drive its network neutrality goals after losing a court case challenging Comcast's throttling of bandwidth-hungry P2P Internet traffic.

For more:
- see the release here 
- here's FierceWireless' take
- Multichannel News has this story

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